What's this blog about?

As a result of a combination of factors, culminating in the shameful UCU boycott-in-waiting of Israel, I've grown alienated & silenced, working here in one of the UK's finest universities all the while feeling like a Boycotted British Academic, alone in facing some dilemmas of the moment. In this generally chilling environment, it's hard to speak out and be heard, and hear others...and I find myself writing this blog.

What's it about? At present, it seems to me like a rather tortured articulation of the state of being silenced & mute, beyond words; struggling for the right even to use them, for a voice which can still be heard. When it started, all those successive boycott motions ago, I'd hoped it would function as a blog forum of support & solidarity amongst academics similarly-situated to BBA, to help us break through the boycott movement's silencing strategies. That hope remains notwithstanding this silence... Perhaps it lives in trying to articulate beyond the filter of these coping mechanisms of old (denial, avoidance, withdrawal); by way of this labour of finding the words, this voice... [A forum of sorts has also arisen in the blog's comments, in which others have adopted the BBA moniker in case of need (e.g.here and hereexposing the racist hate speech which masquerades as UCU solidarity activism).]

Thursday, 29 May 2008

Declare Yourself an Israeli Academic!

"We are academics, scholars, researchers and professionals of differing religious and political perspectives. We all agree that singling out Israelis for an academic boycott is wrong. To show our solidarity with our Israeli academics in this matter, we, the undersigned, hereby declare ourselves to be Israeli academics for purposes of any academic boycott. We will regard ourselves as Israeli academics and decline to participate in any activity from which Israeli academics are excluded."

This is the continuation of the action SPME initiated last year, which has to do date garnered over eleven thousand signatures from around the world. The petition has now been reactivated for it would seem that we presently exist in a time warp around here where, each year, we're required to perform the very same actions all over again, such behaviour being necessitated by my 'colleagues' not giving a damn about waging an insufferable racist campaign year upon year, regardless of the damage it does, in fact, wearing their being the cause of it as a badge of honour. The good news, at least in terms of staving off the feeling of being stuck in time, is that, if you've already signed, there's no need to do so again. At least one step which doesn't have to be senselessly repeated as we fight this beast which refuses to go away...

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The story of this blog, the story of BBA, a beginning:

BBA started in life signing this petition, when it was originally proposed, roughly this time last year. It was in the act of doing so that I first applied the label 'boycotted' to myself, a label which has since come to have so much resonance in capturing my condition, as I try to sustain a job as an academic here in Boycotting Britannia.

Initially, I signed in something of a state of stupor, desperate to do something about what had come to pass. As you'll see from the links to the right, I regard signing such petitions as therapy - it was a relief to be able to do something, to lessen the feeling of powerlessness in the face of this tide of hatred whose existence I'd finally been forced to stop denying.

You know the scene: a few clicks, without much thought or planning, as one does, in that weird way of the world wide web. It was only afterwards, as I contemplated what I'd just done, that I realized how apt this act had been in terms of representing the state in which I found myself and, thus, BBA virtually entered the world.

I started thinking about what this would mean, to be boycotted in this way, according to how I'd just pledged in the petition: I asked myself which parts of me would be boycotted, how much of me - BBA going through the motions of being an academic here in the UK - how much of that would remain and how much of it would fall under the formulation "for the purposes of any academic boycott". Gradually, I grew to realize that this splitting just won't do - it's part of the denial I no longer seem to be able to engender; and it yields the sort of madness with which I am presently having to contend, just for doing this job, at this time...(to be continued)

2 comments:

I cannot offer much in the way of substantive commentary at the moment, but please let me say that there are those of us here in the US who are painfully aware of what is transpiring across the pond.

It is a brutal pathology which cannot be confronted with logic nor reason. Freedom for British academics, and an end to this coercion will come through a process of intensive exposure.

EXPOSE the issues, the images, the realities of your life as an intellectual UNDER SIEGE in a Western democracy.

It is hideous and must not be tolerated. You see, in the US, we are fighting back on multiple fronts.

I have a suggestion as well. Perhaps consider forming strategic alliances with constituencies in non-academic, activist-oriented circles. This includes people with media access, and get the story out man.

Create Facebook Pages, online petitions, and make sure that people like us over here in the US can SEE YOU and hear your voices.

SKYPE with allies globally, and again, capture images of these barbarians in your midst.

Fight Back. It is a war, and as sad as that sounds, this is the frame of reference and posture required to choke the life out Islamist totalitarianism, and it's degenerate countenance by the British Left.

Best wishes and SOLIDARITY from Southern California.

Here's what I did to expose an 'elite' academic Antisemite here in the US.

Now he's got his own Facebook page where he has no control over the message.